The Secret Menu of McDonald’s Supersized Failures, from McTrains to McPlanes & Beyond

It’s time for a little gratuitous and greasy fast food nostalgia. Lovin’ it or hatin’ it, McDonald’s is a permanent fixture of the modern high street, but the nineties were a particularly experimental era for the multinational corporation. Ronald & co were poised to push the boundaries of what a fast-food chain could achieve and…

Meet the President’s Daughter, a “Wild Animal That Had Been Put Into Good Clothes”

In a world rife with lifestyle influencers and “content houses,” where building one’s own notoriety is big business, it’s tempting to dismiss being famous for being famous as the most banal and basic kind of renown. But there was a time, with a burgeoning American press beginning to define itself and a brash and pithy…

A Forgotten Pioneer of Surrealism: Alberto Martini and his Monde Macabre

Welcome to the curious world of Artist Alberto Martini, an obscure original visionary and precursor of surrealism. An illustrator, painter, sculptor, propagandist, and possessor of the graphic macabre. He would go on to influence an art movement, visualise the dark and grotesque for Edgar Allan Poe, and journey to the depths of the underworld with…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 656)

1. The colourful covers of a Japanese lifestyle magazine, in production since 1948 The magazine is Kurashi No Techo, found via Present & Correct 2. Lewis Carroll’s Illustrations for “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” (1864) Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript of Ailce in Wonderland (then titled “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”) is littered with thirty-seven of his own…

The Whiskered Odyssey of Body Hair and Hairless Bodies

Plucking, shaving, waxing, epilating, threading, lasering – whatever preference one has for grooming body hair, we can probably all agree that most of the time, it would be easier if we didn’t have to do it all. And for a good part of Western civilization, underarm, leg, and pubic hair were simply expected parts of…

Long-lost Erotica of a Pre-Freudian Sexologist

Forget Freud. Today, we’re snooping around the personal archives of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a 19th century psychoanalyst and sexologist extraordinaire who history has often been forgotten despite his groundbreaking research in sexual pathology. His chef d’oeuvre is undoubtedly Psychopathia Sexualis, the book that made jaws drop across Europe in 1886 and the first-ever scientific study on sexual…

Forgotten Object du Jour: The Vinaigrette

Pass the vinaigrette! No, not the salad dressing – we’re talking about the vinaigre de toilette. You’re forgiven for the confusion, being born in the wrong century and all. Let’s rewind about 150 years when a vinaigrette once commonly referred to a small container for smelling salts or aromatic vinegar that were used to cover…

The Macabre Legacy of Bombay’s Sky Burial Towers

If you were to take a walk in Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens on Malabar Hill, one of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, you might notice vultures circling above the trees in the distance. Behind the park’s manicured lawns and elegant flower gardens lies a 54-acre forest, home to five circular structures known as the Towers of…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 655)

1. Avast online archive of vintage interior advertising ADSAUSAGE preserves material relating to 20th-century advertising and popular culture, with a focus on film and Los Angeles history. Holdings maintain a collection of over 40,000 artifacts, encompassing newspapers, magazines, slides, and photographs. Found via Present & Correct. 2. This virtual hotel wants you to vacation in…

The Hushed History of Sex Workers on the Battlefield

Sex and war are seemingly the uneasiest of bedfellows, nonetheless, they’ve have had a most intense relationship over centuries of conflict. As early as the Third Crusade, Philip II of France, horrified with the rampant rape and sodomy in his armies, instructed boatloads of “girls of joy” to be dispatched from France to “re-focus” his…